Saturday, April 28, 2012

'Journalistic Jealousy' Or Politics, Or Both?

The Third Part of the
Series* on The Swedish State and Corporate MSM-Campaigns Against WikiLeaks

De Noli, Il Prigioniero. Rome 1974

Analysis. ByMarcello
Ferrada de Noli

In Firenze, Italy, and Stockholm

Introduction

Do Swedish
journalists finds "inspiration" only in their ideological American
and British counterparts or is it instead the case of an infuriated, compact
opposition of their State or corporative employers against the irruption of
WikiLeaks in the world of journalism? Or is it the coordinated action of a
geopolitical design by the three countries involved in the "legal" case? Or both? Is this campaign serving of Sweden objectives of
psychological warfare or just decoy manoeuvres to distract the Swedish people from
issues such as the illegitimate arms deal with the Saudi Arabia dictatorship?
And to which extent the Swedish Military-Intelligence affiliation by a stream
of Swedish Journalists explain the compact implementation of such design?

RT: "The
media that once praised Julian Assange, hailing him a hero for his work as a
whistleblower, has now drastically changed its tune, after the debut of his
talk show on RT. While some say it's due to journalistic jealousy, others
believe the U-turn is political. Laura Smith reports from London." (In“Assange's mainstream friends U-turn after show boom". Published by Russia Today, 24 April 2012. [1]

Laura Smith mentioned two main media in her reporting, the New York
Times and the Guardian, and she finds marked similarities in their ad-hominem expressions in referring to the person Assange, rather than to the talk show The World Tomorrow, which gave reason to their commenting.
Further, I found that those meanings also coincide with what the Swedish mainstream
media published, at times in nearly exact terms (such as the New York Times' reference to "Grandiosity and paranoia" and the Swedish SvD's "Messiah complex and paranoia"; see the table here below:

Table 1

MEDIA

New
York Times

The
Guardian

Svenska
Dagbladet

Swedish
National Radio, SR

Ad-hominem description / slander

“Grandiose and paranoid”

“A
useful idiot”

“Messiah
complex” and “Notorious paranoid”

“Charged in Sweden for rape and
sexual molestation of two girls”

Article
or program title

The Prisoner as Talk Show Host [2]

The World Tomorrow: Julian
Assange proves a useful idiot [3]

Julian Assange and The World
Tomorrow [4]

How
good is Assange’s TV-show? [5]

Journalist

Alessandra Stanley

Luke
Harding

Daniel
Persson

Emmy
Rasper

As an assertive comment in the Swedish Internet
forum Flashback summed it up: “It looks like they are conspiring at both sides of the Atlantic". [6]

In
fact, after my brief review in the Swedish, American, and British media
I
found "business as usual". For instance, the predictable escalation in
the Guardian's
slamming reports on Assange, as in any other day at the office. It is
always a amusing to see how much towards the absurd the Guardian
would escalate their attacks on Assange. Now the Guardian has taken to
the surrealist
argument of criticizing the Assange talk show because “The White House won't have liked what it saw”! (See article by Jeremy Ruden).

Apart
of demonstrating the obvious - why the journalism of WikiLeaks is so enormously
needed – the Guardian article also gives us a clear notion on what vassal
journalism is and what journalists have become in the year 2012. It also helps to
explain why - as the Jerusalem Post mentioned on 20 April with dissimulated
concern – the USA-based “CareerCast” (a site that specializes in career
ranking), “For the first time in the site’s history, two key media positions
could be found in the bottom 10: newspaper reporters and radio/TV broadcasters."

For its part, in the National Swedish Radio program "Hur bra är Assanges TV-show?" ("How good is Assange's TV show"), SR, Channel 3,the
Swedish Radio journalist opens the program by saying “Let us talk about Julian
Assange. . . Here in Sweden he is actually charged for rape and sexual
molestation of two girls” [“Han är nämligen här i Sverige åtalad för
våldtäckt och sexuellt ofredande på två tjejer"]. A guest in the
program later corrects the SR-journalist’s statement: ”I believe it has not
come yet that far”, the guest says; but the SR-journalist replies, ”it is
intended to charge him” ["man vill åtala honom"], and after a
new correction from the guest in the program she says, “eventually” (charge
him), etc. At the end she admits that Sweden “wants 'simply' to talk with him”
["man vill tala med honom, helt enkelt"]! [5]

Laura
Smith mentions accurately that reasons given in general for these journalists’
“betrayal” have been “journalistic jealousy”, or “politics”. In fact, I believe it
is both.” As I stated in my article, "Wikileaks buried Swedish official myth on Neutrality":

“A constellation of offended abusing powers – largely greedy
economic powers abusing the world's miserable, or tiny scared vassal powers
abusing the passivity of its citizens, or media powers abusing people's common
sense – have managed to deprive WikiLeaks of important
logistics; although not of human support. And the political hunting down of its
founder goes on unabated. And as they cannot kill him in person, they still try
to kill his character. The smearing campaign continues.

We should recall the particular psycho-social phenomenon arisen
around the beginning of the 1800’s Industrial Revolution in England and the
rest of Europe: The angry – in fact deeply scared – workers and heirs of the
bygone artisanal era furiously hit and slammed the newly arrived innovative
machines. They sensed the machines would replace them and deprive them of
bread. In today’s Wikileaks News Revolution we witness instead journalists’
daily slam of Julian Assange, David Leigh style.

I believe that in the
Future - in the World Tomorrow - the above will be referred in the
history of journalism as one pathetic social-psychiatric phenomenon of our
century. And while the names of the David Leighs or of their employers and
newspapers have long been forgotten, the fighters for democracy still will
be whispering the name Julian Assange - and evoking the example of WikiLeaks.”

Mainstream media serves governments

Lawyer Glenn Greenwald (named bythe
British political journal New Statesman , in January 2012, as one of America's Top 20
Progressives) [7] recently gave in an interview at RT an
unbeatable illustration on this exacerbating phenomenon of establishment's
media unabashedly serving establishment's power. “Most
notoriously, The New York Times did more than everybody to convince Americans
of the need to attack Iraq. But even since then the model of the US media is
very much to show faith and loyalty to the US government”, said Greenwald.

Greenwald's description is also a
confirmation of the role of the media in Sweden with regards to similar
developments. In "A Terrorist Paradise", that originally
I wrote as debate article for Expressen, [8] I stated,

"The air bombardment and the military occupation of Iraq that followed
suit was motivated in the public by the Swedish media through a typical
psychological-warfare trick: the manipulation of the already
social learned fear-variable rooted in man's naturalself preservationdrive. The authoritiessimply put forwardan extremelyfrighteningthreatpurporting
beingIraq's'weapons of mass destruction': A denomination tobeunconsciouslyassociated
withthe memories of cold war and Sweden’s fear of thedestructiveforce of threatening nuclear weapons. The "Secure claim"in the Swedishmediaabout Iraq'spossession
ofweaponsof mass destructionproved to becompletelyuntrue and fabricated. Equallyungroundedprovedtheallegedcollusion betweeninternational terrorists andtheformerIraqileadershipto be. Butnew lawswere created basedinsuch manipulated collective fear, and those legislation remains!" [9]

Would
the above-mentioned war have taken place in the same fashion if
WikiLeaks had existed at that time? WikiLeaks cables disclosed some
years after that Sweden promulgated the anti-privacy, so called surveillance laws (FRA lagen) under USA's request. It was also a Transatlantic order, a law of the rulers against the interest of the people. Would
that legislation have been possible, at least in the draconian version
they were promulgated, if those cables had been exposed then?

What
is in the interest of those in power is not in the interest of the
people. And what is in the interest of the people – such as their
sovereign right to know why those in power send their children to die in
war
or indulge in horrible “collateral damage” – is negated by the interest
of the
rulers.

WikiLeaks
role for the cause of peace in the World Tomorrow -- is it not obvious?

In this analysis I describe a possible rationale explaining these factors, the media-related and the
political, that appear both concomitant
and interdependent within the
(internationally driven) Swedish case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. For this, a)
I
review what are in my opinion the most principal factors that
constellate Sweden in the political background of the case against
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange,
b) I comment on some features and different journalistic value of
WikiLeaks with regard to traditional media.

For
an extended background regarding the political factors in the reaction
of Sweden against the WikiLeaks exposures and other aspects on the
Swedish case against Julian Assange, I refer to my article This is Why. For a more in-depth background of the situation at the Swedish media I refer to the investigation Does Sweden Inflict Trial by Media against Assange?In
the Fourth and Last Part of this series i) I review the issue of the
participation by prominent Swedish journalists in the Military
Intelligence apparatus, and the possible impact in the State and
corporative MSM campaigns against Assange and WikiLeaks; ii) I give a
summary of the findings including synopses of the main 2012 media
campaign.

Geopolitical
factors -- the threat represented by WikiLeaks to political/military interventions elsewhere in the Third World that secure
corporative interest; This “menacing” role of WikiLeaks is symbolized by
the exposure of war atrocities in Collateral Damage. And Sweden is
directly intervening with troops in such imperialistic occupation wars.
The role of the Swedish vassal government has not only been supporting
such operations militarily, but plays a pivotal political role in Europe in
advocating for the increase of such support on behalf of the European
nations. Sweden has in fact launched a “NATO by Proxy” doctrine (See "The NATO factor. Extradition processinitiated in Sweden against the WikiLeaks founder is to the uppermost extentPOLITICAL", [10] aimed to motivate an increasing sharing of the NATO burden by the rest of European countries.

The decimation
of WikiLeaks - and the deterrent action with regard of possible
initiatives of the like in the local level – in the sight of the Swedish
government, has also to do with exposures done by WikiLeaks on both the
social democratic and conservative governments in their secret agreement
with U.S. officials or conservative politicians and corporations.

The facing
of a visible deterioration in the international prestige abroad –basically
attributed to the abandonment of the Neutrality doctrine in open favour not
only for NATO military doctrine but also in directly participating in NATO-led military operations [11] – have also had an impact in domestic Swedish
politics. For the first time, to the best of my knowledge, demonstrations
have been held in main cities of Sweden by groups of people asking for the resignation of the Minister of Foreign affairs, who together with the
Minister of Defence are viewed as main pro NATO “warmongers”. The Minister
of Defence Sten Tolgfors was recently obligated to resign as a government measure
to counteract the exposures on the arms-deal scandal with Saudi Arabia, a
NATO principal ally in the region.

It is after
those events that the public support for the government parties started
for the first time (in some time) to decrease in the opinion polls. This
circumstantial “de-stabilization” process is added to a context of
marked deterioration in social welfare and employment,
particularly amongst the immigrant population now estimated at over 27 per cent of the total population. [12] In a typical “political” manoeuvre assisted by
basic social-psychological notions, the government has launched at least
three identified media campaigns aimed to portray Julian Assange and
WikiLeaks as “responsible” for the deterioration of the Swedish loss
in international prestige (“How could the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange get the world to question Sweden's credibility”?) [13]

The
expected effect of the above among the Swedish constituencies is double fold: a) on the
one hand finding an explanation to replace the real causes that are behind
such international deterioration of Swedish prestige. As this is
undoubtedly related to issues of Sweden’s foreign policy, this measure
represents also an attempt to stop the analyses on such relationships with
foreign powers; b) on the other hand, by obtaining a national cohesion
behind the government that “defends” Sweden [14] and shows being ready to
“process and punish” Sweden’s Number One enemy, the rulers use the
“chauvinist trick” of having people to switch attention from economic or
domestic political issues to issues of “national interest”.

One
remarkable feature regarding the above is that in Sweden very seldom are
legal aspects of the case against Assange ventilated in the press – actually it has occurred
only in very few occasions. Instead, what has been a constant action presented
particularly by the State owned media (National Television channels,
Radio, etc.) is the blaming of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, accused of
having an anti-Sweden political agenda. This has reached extremes as to
publicly accuse Assange and WikiLeaks of blackmailing Sweden or implied
WikiLeaks would be protecting Russian’s interests (Sweden’s “arch
enemy”). See this analysis under "Sweden’s Plan “Z”, Phase 6: Swedish State Television
explaining "why" WikiLeaks should be viewed as detrimental for the
"interests of our nation", in Part II of this series: "Plan Z: the latest national chauvinist campaign
anti-WIkiLeaks in the Swedish media". [15]

Domestic
political factors regarding the opportunity being used by local
political
organizations, such as fundamentalist groups, that, voided of a
large mass-support, are bound parasitically from highly publicized
media-events
in order to move forward their political agenda through some
journalists
in their ranks employed by the MSM. These organizations have not
made
secret that the Julian Assange case is a symbol for their struggle [16],
a campaign
seeking the further radicalizing of the legislation in Sweden
towards, among
other things “only sexual contact after written consent”, a national tax imposed to all men (mansskatt) in Sweden [17] ("to compensate Swedish women of centuries of
men
patriarchal dominance”), and the increasing in the penalty for
sexual-related offences attributed to the “nature” of men ("men are
animals", as expressed by the President of the State-supported
nation-wide organization ROKS). [18] In the ranks of
this multifaceted fundamentalist cohort are found people of
different professions, not only journalists. Example of notable Swedish
politicians which have advocated for such further radicalization of
the law are Thomas Bodström (the former minister of Justice) and
the former Ombudsman for gender issues Claes Borgström. They also established the Law firm Bodström & Bogström, which is the law firm that defended the
plaintiffs in their “accusations” against Julian Assange. Marianne Ny, the
prosecutor in the case has been also participating in the preparation of the
present “radical” legislation – under which the Swedish State has asked
to “investigate” Julian Assange.

II

Why this journalistic jealousy about WikiLeaks? The differences between WikiLeaks journalism and traditional journalism"

There are several aspects regarding
the mainstream media that converge in the
role of "traditional" journalists in the anti-WikiLeaks, anti-Assange
campaigns:

Ideology aspects: The ideology that rules in society is actually the rulers ideology

The German philosopher Karl
Marx (1818-1883), originally an erudite on Epicurean Greek philosophy, left
also to posterity a prolific amount of political-philosophical writings and
theses. Some among of those have history neglected as unfeasible and were
sentenced to collect dust in the Utopia-shelve of our libraries. Yet, some of
those analyses have remained amazingly prevalent regardless epochs or
latitudes. One among these is the description of social superstructure,
i.e. juridical institutions, laws, moral, religion, and all what form the
cultural sphere of societies, that, according to the philosopher, will always
follow the direction given by the economic and thus political interests
governing the infrastructure of those societies. [19]

No
one has ever been able to
refute the Supersestructure Theory. Instead, we daily receive a
confirmation of
its postulates. With regard to the juridical sphere, a conclusion
derived from
such theory is that there is no such a thing as "objective" law, in
the sense of objective, non-biased distribution of justice. The same can
be applied to the one basic intellectual implementation of culture, the
transmission of the Ideology message.

Under
the principle that the ideology that rules in society is actually the
ideology representing the interests of those in power, one empirical
conclusion is that the ruling Mainstream Media is the ideological vehicle of sustaining political power.

A second aspect to
consider according to this model is that the political power is the
continuation of the economic power, predominantly the multinational corporative
world. In this regard, the Mainstream media apparatus is a part of such a corporative
world, it is owned by that power and the identification with the
political/ideological interests of that power appears logically compatible.

In Sweden, the consolidation of ownership in Sweden’s main newspapers
reduces the number of owners basically to two: Bonnier (with the biggest share)
and Schibsted. In its turn, this provides only one prevalent ideological
perspective. These are the details:

The result is that a significant number of Swedish journalists,
together with other important segments of the “cultural-elite” manpower,
transfer from one point to the other within a reduced perimeter in job
availability. Also, the consolidation of ownership in the media results in a
quite monolithic ideological perspective under which employed journalists would
produce news-articles and columns.

The problem with
regard to the public is of another kind, and has to do with the assumption still
spread among the people that the MSM has an independent voice or an
"non-partisan", unbiased selection and presentation of the
news. This is an ethical issue.

Competition factor

One ostensible aspect is related to the “labour menace”, or "market competitiveness" ascribed to this new, evolutionary
journalism that the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange has introduced in the
international media sphere. I have put forward this item in the above cited "Wikileaks buried Swedish official myth on Neutrality". [20]

Secondly. Several authors
have developed in this theme, that WikiLeaks have provided more vital
information flow than all the mainstream media together in a vast time-segment.
Another item is the quality of the information, in the sense that the
information WikiLeaks exposes originates in "facts-sources" (direct
sources) rather than in sources telling what they know or interpret -- which is characteristic in the old media.

A
third characteristic is that the disclosures made by WikiLeaks have to
do with so called "classified information", often an euphemism used by
those in power to hide vital information to the citizens regarding the
rulers true motivation for their acts of war and in certain cases - as
revealed - for direct militarily or police oppression of the people they
govern. The Leaks published by WikiLeaks are in any case about secret documents and NOT about rumours. Several important aspects are associated with the disclosure of classified information done by WikiLeaks; here mentioned some:

Describing the nature of these leaked documents, WikiLeaks has also pointed
out that "Secrecy is not always legitimate", meaning with this the absolutely democratic right of the people to the
"secrets" held by governments particularly in cases the matters at
stake might compromise people’s direct life events such as the prospective of
being engaged in a war. [21]

A fourth main
characteristic is the public availability of the information leaked.

Attending to the succinct
summary above it becomes clear that the Mainstream media has clear disadvantages
in competing with issues of "quality" of journalist information in
the terms of what is the good for the people - even if it is disadvantageous
for the interests of the rulers.

This is why the
characterization as liberationist is one of the most accurate in referring to
Julian Assange and the journalism-model he founded, WikiLeaks

References and Notes

[1] Youtube, "Assange's mainstream friends U-turn after show boom", Published by Russia Today, 24 April 2012

[7] Also ranked by Forbes as one of
the "25 Most Influential Liberals in the U.S. Media"

[8]
Expressen's debate redaction considered the article for publication but
they could not give a certain publication date for nearest days. I
could not wait, for which I decided to publish it instead in Professors blogg ("Ett Terroristparadis?").
It was a hectic time, during the Surveillance-legislation debate (FRA,
see below), and I assessed that a meeting of Dr David Erberhard's
theses had to be published promptly

[12] M Ferrada.Noli, "Assange, The Professors, and the taxi Driver", Professors blogg, 23 April 2012. In Denial mechanisms
in Demographic issues about Muslim immigrants:"A conservative sentiment of “us” and
“they” is reputed to be rather strong among many Swedes. Add that to the
discrimination exercised against immigrants with respect to work issues or in a
variety of societal spheres, a result of which is that the presence of immigrants
in Sweden tends to be “hidden” from the eye of the public as well the media,
etc. I am sure that many would be very surprised to know that immigrants in
Sweden - or individuals with foreign background as they are called
statistically speaking - are in fact over the 26 per cent of the total Swedish
population (2,450,537 individuals comprising 1,384,929 foreign-born immigrants
and 1,065,608 born in Sweden of one or both foreign-born parents)"

[19] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology. Critique of Modern
German Philosophy According to Its Representatives Feuerbach, B. Bauer and
Stirner, and of German Socialism According to Its Various Prophets., Parts I & III, Lawrence and Wishart Ltd.,
London, 1938

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